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Red Sky at Morning, Session Three, The Gift Horse's Maw
Opening The session opened in The Tomb of Amyana, with our heroes standing over the remains of a band of blood-apes and puzzling over a few strange stones they found. Amber's seemed to react to a specific melody, which Dax recognized as the theme song for a casino-brothel in Coral known as the Nightingale's Roost. Largo's, however, reacted to physical force and revealed a small obsidian lion that raced off when he broke it open. The party noticed that the manse slowly began to stop moving. Fern's expertise revealed that it was not dangerous and was likely due to the removal of the hearthstones, which seemed to be powering the manse. The sound grew quieter, and upon glancing at Amyana's body and seeing her closed eyes Largo blacked out. He received a series of visions regarding his First Age life. After a bit of chat and recovery, the party headed back out and got in the submarine. They went to the place where they had originally located Leviathan and were greeted by a pair of beastmen. The beastmen, a pair of shark-men who seemed to be wearing some sort of minimalist military uniform, greeted the party formally and told them to follow them to Luthe. The journey took the rest of the evening and the night. They arrived the next morning. Sunken Luthe Upon arrival, the party was greeted warmly by Leviathan and a large force of beastmen, which seemed to consist of sharks and octopus. They arranged themselves on either side of the entryway and looked very formal and reverent. Largo, after having fought the Abyssal, took Leviathan aside and told him his suspicions- that the Abyssal was the reincarnation of Queen Amyana. Leviathan's reaction was a little surprising; he seemed very sad, and clearly did not know this before, but he seemed unsurprised and resigned. He apologized to Largo, slightly to Largo's confusion. The party gathered up again, and at Leviathan's request they existed the submarine with Fern's spell. At this, he took Largo's hand and assumed a form he had not taken since the High First Age; that of a large, handsome man with a short black ponytail, now with tattoos visible across his face. The Solar Circle stood beside him and swam into the entrance of Luthe. They were promptly shot at. An enormous blast of Essence artillery barely missed the party. Leviathan and Raven each caught the words "Traitorspawn" "Leviathan" and "The Dark One" being shouted out as chaos enveloped the entryway. Some of the beastmen seemed to be fighting to defend the party, and the party took advantage of this to escape, following Leviathan underneath Luthe. Leviathan led them into a small entrance, locked the door behind them, and asked the party what had just happened. It quickly became clear that nobody knew quite what was going on. Leviathan began to hatch a plan. He led the party around to the propulsion systems of Luthe, and the party managed to sneak in without attracting too much attention. With some assistance from Dax's stealth abilities, they managed to sneak into the control chamber, swipe as many information and tools as they could, and escape. They raced to the surface, and then began to take stock. The party had managed to secure a First Age maintenance kit that would be ideal for caring for the submarine; several books on a variety of topics including sailing, magitech, and first age vessels; a map of dragon lines that also detailed the path Luthe took during the first age; and a large number of starmetal coins with ornate orichalcum circuitry. The map was clearly outdated, as the dragon lines have changed much since then, but not entirely useless. The coins were the real prize. They were Prayer Transceiver Modules, a First Age communication device that allows anyone to communicate with Taru-Kul. Taru-Kul is a minor goddess whose only function is to archive and repeat messages to Celestial Exalts who are using these artifacts. Since the Usurpation, she has been extremely bored and was absolutely delighted to speak with the party. The party then sat down to talk with Leviathan. Leviathan proved to be full of interesting information, and in particular proved to be utterly fascinating to Fern. Particularly interesting of the information given by Leviathan was that the Twilight Caste of the circle including Arcadi and Amyana was none other than Brigid, the first sorceress and Mother of All Spells. However, revealing this information was a little complicated, as it seemed that whenever Leviathan began to speak of her, his voice suddenly went silent. He seemed wholly oblivious to this. The news was also met with a level of skepticism by Raven, who was fairly certain that Brigid was simply a legend. It seemed that there was something strange going on here. Leviathan decided that he needed to head out and speak with the Silver Crescent about recent events, not the least of which would be retaking Luthe. He lacked any methods of protecting the party from the Wyld, he wasn't certain how the other Lunars would react to him taking a circle of Solars to their inner council, and that he knew the party had other business to attend to. He bade them goodbye, taking with him three of the party's eight Prayer Transciever Modules and requesting that they keep in touch. And, as usual, try not to die. The party headed to the Dragon-Arch of Keiala Maya and the cult there, in hopes of securing a vessel better for long journeys and less cramped as well. They got on board the Diamond Resolve. Two weeks passed, and the party took the opportunity to get some much-needed training time in. A short stop for supplies, and then another week of training time. The party honed some of their skills, and Largo learned to read. Nightingale's Roost The party arrived at the Nightingale's Roost. It seemed to be a beautiful white building, playing joyful music, and covered with a large amount of colorful, rather tacky tape. Upon entering the party felt their spirits lifted. A short, oddly-dressed god named Viridian Breeze noticed the party as they walked in, quickly pulling them aside to the back room. He introduced himself as the god of the place and a member of The White Symphonic, a band in which Amber was once one of the leaders. He took the party back to the green room and showed them a large, rapidly-spinning crystal orb which he believed to be Amber's first age tomb. He showed the party that by throwing objects at different parts of it you could get different pitches. Amber proceeded to play her song by throwing things at different places on the sphere. This revealed a second sphere, spinning in the opposite direction, which made no noise. She then broke this one by making a concentrated sound at a certain pitch, filling the room with little white crystal shards and revealing a stone coffin and a large pile of powerful artifacts. Foremost among these was the Violin of the Poet-Kings, as well as potent essence armor, some biomagitech hearthstone amulets, and a gorgeous necklace set with a beautiful gem. She donned each of the artifacts, then picked up the violin to play... immediately passing out. She had a vision of herself, playing in front of the entire Solar Deliberative, creating a cascade of essence swirling all around, and woke to see the faces of her Circle standing over her- and then hearing a crash and shouts of panic. The party rushed outside to discover several Dragon-Blooded and a handful of well-armed mortals in the casino area. It seemed the entire place was catching fire or exploding, and a waterfall that ran through the place seemed to have suddenly swelled and flooded much of the manse. The party began to fight, but then Amber stepped out from the green room, and began to play. All hostile beings in the manse immediately fell to their knees and wept. Amber realized she had accompaniment, and looked behind her to see herself accompanied by a demon and an automata as well as Viridian himself. These were the members of The White Symphonic. The party dispatched the hostiles with little effort, and then noticed the civilians in the audience appearing to bow down to worship Amber. The party smiled, and then began to make motions to repair the manse properly. Character Thoughts and Reactions Steve really enjoyed this session. He realizes he gave out a lot of artifacts, and also that he kind of copped-out in the combat. However, he thinks he did Leviathan properly this time around, is getting into the groove of STing, and is starting to reveal a bit more of his long-term aims and plans for the campaign. He's happy that Dean seems to like what he sends his character through, and thinks it's funny how every major plot twist shakes up Fern, especially since he's gotten into the habit of revealing plot twists about when he considers the information revealed basic and trivial. He was getting a bit tired by the end of the session, and is wondering a little if other people thought it went a little late, but he sure liked it. Also, he's realizing that the "canon ends here" mark is approaching... and looking forward to it. It was a good diving board. Also, he's going to ban himself from puzzles involving crystals. After this next one. Alexa enjoyed this session, too, but really needs to rethink the way she's playing Fern. Getting excited at everything really isn't appropriate for a high-Temperance character. The castestones puzzle the heck out of her (and her character), and she's looking forward to solving them. Also, that tomb and those artifacts were a delightful example of "bringing the awesome". Dean is getting tired of Raven breaking combat. Largo gets offended when someone steals his thunder, so I should have rolled for limit but W/E. Also thinking about studying Mantis Style for clinching goodies. Also also, yay for readingz! Teager is just like "HOLY FUCK I AM AWESOME." Amber rolled limit twice (and took the two points of it), but seeing as though he's looking forward to RPing her Limit Breaking, that's not a bad thing. He's also going to let Amber's plots lie low for a while, at least until everyone else hits up their tomb. (S)he has many, many plans. Followed by Red Sky at Morning, Session Four, The Gates of Heaven and the Sands of Time Category:Sunlight on the Water Category:Red Sky at Morning